Amazon.com today announced Friends and Family Gifting, a feature that allows customers to easily keep track of birthdays and special occasions, get shopping reminders and manage gift ideas for everyone on their list year-round. MasterCard has joined Amazon in bringing customers Friends and Family Gifting this holiday season. Here's more info on this new service:

With Friends and Family Gifting, customers can easily centralize their gift-giving ideas throughout the year in one place. Using the Gift Lists feature, customers can create and share gift ideas via email, Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest. To help make gift-giving easy, Amazon Friends and Family Gifting lets you see which gift-giving occasions are coming up next so that it’s easy to stay on top of birthdays, anniversaries or other special occasions. Customers can also opt-in to receive shopping e-mail reminders before friends’ birthdays that link directly to their existing Wish Lists to take the guess-work out of getting what they really want.

There are several ways that Friends & Family Gifting can help customers organize their gift-giving:

· Keep Track of Friends & Family: Store important dates like birthdays and anniversaries with just a few clicks and get reminders.· Add Information about Friends: Customers can find existing Amazon Wish Lists to make it easy to find the perfect gift for their friends. By connecting their Amazon and Facebook accounts, customers can also use information about their Facebook friends, such as the things their friends ‘Like,’ to select a gift.· Great for Kids: Make it even easier to find the best gifts for kids, as Amazon Friends & Family Gifting provides gift recommendations by age and interest.